Scott Jennings | Fancy Farm: If you can't 'win,' at least don't lose

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Perhaps no church picnic in America causes as much anxiety among political operatives and their bosses as the one held on the first Saturday in August at the St. Jerome Catholic Church in Fancy Farm, Kentucky.

For the uninitiated, the picnic features a political forum where office holders and candidates stump speak in front of hundreds of people who are screaming back at the top of their lungs. Half of the crowd hates you and the other half loves you; few attendees are persuadable voters. It is frequently near 100 degrees. Also, if you speak too long, a bluegrass band plays you off the stage while the crowd laughs at you.

In Kentucky, we use this church picnic as a rite of passage for those who seek political viability in statewide elections.

It is hard to "win" at Fancy Farm and much easier to "lose," as there isn't a political forum in Kentucky where gaffes are so instantly and memorably magnified. Just ask Attorney General and former U.S. Senate candidate Jack Conway, who spent weeks in 2009 apologizing for using lingo a street tough might employ when describing his rugged maternal origins (just Google "Conway tough SOB" to refresh your memory).

Speeches used to be a little more memorable and free flowing, chock full of snappy one-liners and interesting barbs. These days it's a little more sanitized, although the theatrics and costumed characters employed by some politicians are funny (the McConnell camp's "Arab Sheiks for Lunsford" in 2008, Ernie Fletcher's "Seven Chandler Dwarfs" in 2003, and the Bush campaign's "Gorebucks Buddhist Monks" in 2000 come to mind).

The truth is that most voters will never see the speeches but might hear a line or two in the ensuing media coverage, so in order to "win" a politician needs to nail a couple of points and get out of Dodge without a gaffe.

Who has the most at stake and what should you expect from them?

? Mitch McConnell - Kentucky's senior senator will likely mention President Obama's policies a lot more than any Democrat on the stage, and in ruby red Kentucky that works to his advantage. Experience matters at Fancy Farm and the ability to stand and deliver despite the brutal heat and heckling will serve McConnell well. His Fancy Farm speeches are typically workmanlike, tightly themed, and achieve the objective of getting a simple message across in the next day's news coverage.

? Matt Bevin - The recently announced tea party challenger to McConnell needs to explain to Republicans how he would vote differently if he were in the U.S. Senate. It is difficult to imagine a candidate more unknown than Bevin, and trying to have meaningful conversations with people at an event attended almost entirely by decided voters will be difficult. Bevin has a reputation of being a wallflower at the handful of GOP events he has recently attended, not a helpful posture in a place where backslapping and handshaking are on the orders of the day. Bevin will have to make his case at the GOP events leading up to the picnic itself as he's not invited to speak at the main event.

? Alison Lundergan Grimes - The Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate has appeared on the Fancy Farm stage as a candidate before, but by the time the secretary of state was called up in 2011 most of the crowd had migrated to the barbecue lines. She'll face louder heckling this time around and will need to resist the urge to scream into the microphone as she's done at other political events. The challenge for Grimes is to make the Democratic partisans in attendance happy while not giving the McConnell operation anything useful for the future. That challenge permeates her entire campaign - how to run as a Democrat for U.S. Senate in a state that has rejected Al Gore, Lois Weinberg, John Kerry, Dan Mongiardo, Barack Obama, Bruce Lunsford, and Jack Conway.

? Jamie Comer - The agriculture commissioner is now the odds-on-favorite to be the Republican nominee for governor in 2015. He might be best served to offer up a sharp and pointed defense of McConnell as a way to signal to conservatives that he's not afraid of engaging a street fight, which is what the next governor's race will be. Comer is folksy and comfortable behind a podium and should excel in this venue.

? Adam Edelen - Kentucky's auditor is obviously laying the groundwork for a gubernatorial run himself. He has carved out a reputation as a pro-business Democrat in some quarters, and making sure not to offer any anti-growth rhetoric is important. Edelen could discuss his audit of the Jefferson County Public Schools system in the broader context of education reform and why his audits are more than reactions to scandals but also useful as policy reform tools.

If there's one piece of advice I have for all of the speakers it is to put off eating a sauce-laden mutton sandwich until after your speech, because nothing causes a person to yell "son-of-a?" faster than ruining your shirt at a church picnic in Graves County.

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Scott Jennings | Fancy Farm: If you can't 'win,' at least don't lose

Perhaps no church picnic in America causes as much anxiety among political operatives and their bosses as the one held on the first Saturday in August at the St. Jerome Catholic Church in Fancy Farm,